A Conversation with Amanda Fruta, University Art Museum’s Public Affairs and Communications Specialist, on the occasion of the Museum’s Robert Irwin: Site Determined exhibition, by James Scarborough

Amanda Fruta is the Public Affairs and Communications Specialist at Cal State Long Beach's University Art Museum. She has a B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts from Occidental College. She knows a lot about art in general and about this exhibition in particular.  She shares this knowledge without recourse to academic artspeak. She wants to create meaningful connections and partnerships, foster new discourse, and support a culture of access, equity, and public service. Her vision statement should serve as the mission statement for all university art museums.

She conducts tours and, now, an interview that clarify and contextualize Irwin’s remarkable achievements.   

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JS: Your exhibition Robert Irwin: Site Determined (reviewed here) sheds light on an otherwise little-known portion of Irwin’s career. What can artists and architects, even, especially young artists and architects, learn from this show in particular and from Irwin’s work in general? 

AF: Irwin’s practice is very much one that is not by the books. It is a broad creative process informed by his personal philosophy which values personal perception, intimate perspectives, and experiential eccentricities. As an artist, from his initial instinct to break the frame of hard-edged painting, to his environmental explorations, he has consistently had this conditional response that feels ritualistic and almost spiritual. Irwin brings into focus the link between individual mark of a paintbrush to the singular blade of grass, blowing in the wind and casting the lightest chatter that reaches our ear. All the peculiar particularities in his drawings outline this mode of being that is not a practice, but a way of being. What is to be learned is to turn inward and be inspired by what naturally moves you. The teachings of coursework and assignments can train you and give you valuable skills for your trade but finding what inspires you on your deepest level that will set your artistic voice free. It was never about right and wrong for Irwin, it was about perceiving your body in space, and the feeling of environmental connectivity in these outdoor works. Irwin tuned the stream of the Getty Center’s Central Garden with hand-placed river stones.  What will the young artist tune?  

An important and more surface level lesson here, which may very well anger architects and designers that uphold their academic training as medals, is that there is no architect without an artist first. And that art is all and all is art.

JS: What was your biggest challenge to mount the show? 

AF: There are so many pieces, each with their minute details in this exhibition, that the execution of this show was daunting.  Luckily with an organized registrar, detail-oriented curator, and sharp-eyed preparator, we were able to mount the show in time for the press preview. There were hiccups along the way, including an expedited re-framing of a few pieces that had reversed orientation and a surprise contemporary piece to the exhibition.  Luckily, timelines are measured to allow for addressing issues such as these.

JS: How do you connect the concerns of Irwin’s early abstract painting with those of the site-specific work in this exhibition? 

AF: There is a clear connection in sensibility and intent of Irwin’s early abstract paintings and site-specific work. The line work of the paintings at its basic level deals with framing and the breaking of frame, as does his installation and site-specific work. This draws attention to this fascination that Irwin had with heightening the viewer’s awareness of their spatial existence. His early paintings are also largely in a warm glowing palette, favoring lined yellows that seem to evoke scenes basked in sunlight. Often the crossing rectangular compositions of the artist’s paintings provide a space for the viewer to peer into, much like his outdoor projects do with their emphasized windows and constructed views that have a cinematic quality. More broadly, there is a sense in both of Irwin’s working modes of a breakdown from the macro to the micro, this kind of consideration of the parts and parcel of visual perception, with a reverence for the Gestalt at the same time – as if encouraging the viewer to see with a gaze that goes in and out of focus.

JS: What do you think will be Irwin’s legacy? 

AF: Irwin is a rare breed of artist who makes artwork that is just itself, as he is himself, simple and honest. His philosophy is understated and not amplified by a scale so monumental that it is untouchable in its physical intimidation. Not often is humor and modesty something associated with art that appears minimalist; the voice of Irwin has a way of dancing with his favorite muse--natural light--delicately, not haughtily. He does things for himself, in his way, but is interested in extending a contemplative experience for the viewer that provokes a childlike wonder. This emphasis on the personal experience and discovery of individualistic ways of seeing is key to his legacy, I think.

JS: The exhibition’s Curator, Matthew Simms, writes that we shouldn’t consider the models and drawings on display as art, even though Irwin conceived and made them. That raises two questions. First, if they’re not art then does Irwin not consider himself an artist? If he doesn’t, then what is his role in the creative process? Second, as objects, then, do they have the same art historical (not commercial) value as, say, maquettes and sketches by Picasso or Giacometti? 

AF: In LACMA’s A Few Things About Robert Irwin, the documentarian asked, "If you weren't an 'artist' what would you be doing?" To which he replied, matter-of-factly, "The same thing." That says it all for me.

I would say he does very much consider himself an artist, but he isn’t caught up with the trappings and status of an elevated sense of self in that way. He is particular, but he is not precious. It is my understanding that Irwin considered all of these drawings and models art in the time that he made them. He was so prolific that he does not place these planning works on a pedestal, so-to-speak. From speaking to him, he does not seem to put any of his work on a pedestal. I believe that they are valid to be valued and studied as a reflection of this very specific “practice” that Irwin has always exercised.

JS: I am of the opinion that Irwin’s work for the unrealized Arts Enrichment Master Plan for the Miami International Airport is artistically magisterial. Why was the project not done? What did he learn from both the proposal process and its eventual outcome? 

AF: I may be wrong, but I believe that the airlines on the concourses transitioned after this project was proposed and presented. I have heard from another local artist that have proposed works for the same site with a group of artists, shortly after Irwin, who reached the same disappointing outcome. They informed me that some work of Irwin’s was in fact completed, but a very marginal amount. This new group of artists working on the Miami airport looked to pick up where Irwin left off, working under similar environmentally inspired principals, but the airlines were changed over and the new tenants disagreed with this direction.

I can’t say what Irwin learned from the process from a business perspective, but artistically, many lessons learned and ideations worked out in these plans were implemented in the Getty Center’s Central Garden. The similarities, specifically between the trellis structures and bougainvillea, are remarkable. Also, you can see stark likenesses repeated in another unrealized work – the spiraling labyrinth-like motifs at proposed Battery Park project in New York – are clearly of a similar makeup of some of the winding circular shrubbery in the Central Garden.

 

Marfa Color Plan (2002)

color pencil on Mylar

Sheet: 30 x 42 inches (76.2 x 106.7 cm)

Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Promised gift of L.J. Cella

Photograph: Pablo Mason

© 2018 Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.